News: Google sued over patent infridgement

Credit should be given where it is due... maybe Google forgot that or maybe they did come up with the lovely idea of indexing websites and presenting results through a single website, but it looks like someone other than Lawrence Page patented a similar invention some 3 years before the Google creators filed their own patent. This was released in Boston Globe, Computerworld, and probably some thousand blogs by now
You can view the patent by Kenneth P. Baclawski here
I'm not 100% sure if this the corresponding Google patent, but try here or here.

Patents are actually a way of telling someone "You can't step on my grass without paying!", if you browse through at Google Patents search, you'll find out quite a load of inventions brought down and described on paper, i.e. "patented". I bet it's impossible to patent a new invention nowadays and not to cite older ones. Either way, I believe patents are evil - They actually restrict you because someone else had a bright moment and was quick enough to write it down on a piece of paper, and that someone now requests to receive from Google a "noble" (try "adequately enormous") royalty.

Google: Linux repositories for the masses!

In order to further promote their own software, Google has created server repositories for easier download. I really don't know the deal of such actions which actually promote indirectly GNU/Linux, but maybe they'd like their software to be used on other platforms too, other than Microsoft Windows (they get a bigger share of the market?). Currently, Google Linux repositories, by providing step-by-step tutorials, support all the popular distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Mandriva, SUSE, Red Hat and Fedora. They even have an automated script for the successful repo installation.